the first full throated defenses of hagel came in the "daily beast" from the editor of that website's blog and the author of the "crisis of zionism." joining me now bret stephens and peter beinart. you accused chuck hagel of being anti-semi. >> i said there was an odor. >> what evidence do you have this is the case? >> he had this famous statement that i'm sure you heard several times by now about the jewish lobby intimidating a lot of people. a lot of the discussion had to do with this line, the jewish lobby. as opposed to say the pro-israel lobby which is a very diverse collection of organizations. some of them with very different motives. what got me really wasn't so much the adjective, although i found the adjective odd, it was the verb, intimidates. chuck hagel for 12 years was a senator from the state of nebraska. there are about 6,100 jews in the state of nebraska. i can imagine many lobbies that intimidated hagel when he was in the senate. the ethanol lobby, for example, the farm lobby, various other kinds of lobbies. the nra, the pro-life lobby and so on. it's hard to see how he l